Must the Ichtyologist Swim Like a Fish UPLOADED SCRIBD ARCHIVE

8/4/2019 Must the Ichtyologist Swim Like a Fish UPLOADED SCRIBD ARCHIVE

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BUDDHISM AND PSYCHOTHERAPY DRAFT Page 1

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010, FOR GEORGE BOND

MUST THE ICHTHYOLOGIST SWIM LIKE A FISH? MUST THE MAKER OF

FIRECRACKERS POP?

And Other Questions from a Guest at the Table

Gordon Bermant

I. A Guest at the Table.

It is a special honor and challenge for me to contribute to this conference, because

I am not particularly well-qualified for the task. I am not a psychotherapist.1 My most

important exposure to psychotherapy was as an analysand of Eugene Goforth, M.D., of

Seattle, Washington. The importance of that experience continues to grow in my

understanding.

Nor am I a Buddhist scholar or practitioner of any strenuous Buddhist path. In

reading Buddhist texts, English is my only language . For the past 20 years, since I first

met the late Reverend Kenryu T. Tsuji, I have devoted myself to being open to the

teachings of Jodo Shinshu as these teachings are available in English. I am convinced

that there are truths in Jodo Shinshu that go to the heart of the human condition, and that

paying close attention to (listening deeply to) the teaching continues to transform my

mind and character gradually but beneficially.

By definition, these small transformations are psychotherapeutic: they are good

for my mental health. It seems to me, however, that the more important thing to say

about them is that they are religious. I have an intuition that this distinction is important.

My intuition is that keeping this distinction in mind is particularly important for insuring

the successful transmission of Shin Buddhism in America during the next decades. And I


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have some concern that certain aspects of Buddhist psychotherapy might blur the

distinction to the detriment of Jodo Shinshu teaching in America. This would be

unfortunate.

My challenge in this paper is to move from intuition to a persuasive argument that

the intuition is correct. This is an early draft of the argument, and I welcome all the

criticism conference participants are kind enough to offer. I am a guest at your table.

Thank you for inviting me.

II. Overview of the Argument The paper proceeds as follows. Section III

describes the traditional position in American Psychology2 and Psychiatry according to

which professional practitioners are not required to display the qualities of health or well-

being that they study and profess for others. All Psychology is the Psychology of the

Other One, not of the self. The major exception to this generality is Psychoanalysis,

which has from the outset required analysts in training to become analysands in treatment

with a senior practitioner. Psychoanalysis has had a requirement for Psychology in the

first person that other schools of Psychology have not required of their practitioners.

Section IV contrasts the separation of the teacher from the teaching for

Psychology with the close connection between religious teachers and their teachings.

Authentic religious teachers rely on personal religious experience to validate and

energize their teaching. We expect religious teachers to exemplify the virtues and

benefits of their teachings, that is, to practice what they preach. If they do not, they may

be charged with self-deception, hypocrisy, or charlatanism. Such charges damage the

credibility of the teaching as well as the teacher. At a minimum, we insist that religious


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teachers avow their religious teaching even if they do always live accordingly. The

meaning of avowal in this context, drawn from Professor Fingarette, will be described.

Section V inquires about Buddhist psychotherapy as a set of practices that is

under-specified regarding the requirements appropriately placed on its practitioners: are

Buddhist psychotherapists appropriately held, by themselves and others, to the standards

of religious teachers, or may they retain the privacy and freedom from religious avowal

granted to psychotherapists working in other regimes? Contemplating this question

opens to a discussion of the distinction between religious doctrine, which is just to be

believed/avowed or not, and religious practice, which is just to be performed or not. In

the context of psychotherapy, the most important practice is meditation, some forms of

which are not necessarily tied to any prior religious avowal at all. A brief review of the

literature reveals psychotherapists taking a variety of positions on how the practice of

meditation by clients/patients connects to other practices or doctrines that are explicitly

Buddhist. These positions are characterized by the extent and quality of appropriation

(borrowing) between the vocabularies and conceptual schemes of Buddhism and

psychotherapy. Also discussed here are issues of how to interpret the recommendations

for secular meditation, Buddhism as the Religion of No Religion, and Buddhism

Without Beliefs that have been offered by skilled and revered Buddhist teachers.

Section VI, which is not included in this draft, highlights distinctions between

doctrine and practice by contrasting the topics of debates between Buddhist

psychotherapists with the topics of debates between Christian psychotherapists. The

Christian debates are set out along clear and strongly held positions about doctrine and

commitments of faith in regard to what should count as authentic Christian


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psychotherapy. The Buddhist debates are more difficult to characterize, which may mean

that the principle of religious avowal is less firmly established among those who practice

and publish under the heading of Buddhist psychotherapy. The extraction of practice

from its religious context, and the connection between authentic practice and religious

avowal for both members of the therapeutic dyad, are not issues in these debates.

Section VII concludes the article by turning specifically to the relationship

between Jodo Shinshu and psychotherapy in current American context. I describe Jodo

Shinshu in America as a religion with practices that include deep hearing of Buddhist

teaching and the sincere, joyful recitation of Nembutsu. A Shin Buddhist is a person who

avows herself (identifies herself as) a person standing in a particular relationship to

multiple supporting causes and conditions in the world. What limits, if any, surround

appropriate descriptions, evocations, and explanations of that experience? Can the

description and method of transmission be effectively reduced through extraction into

psychotherapeutic regimes, in which connections to historical and doctrinal roots have

been severed, so that the religion collapses onto a psychological substrate described in a

new vocabulary? I conclude is that the avowal (identification) of oneself as a Shin

Buddhist in America is, over time, a reciprocating cause and effect of a transformed

awareness of wisdom and compassion in myself and others. Because transformation is

gradual, texts (dharma) and community (sangha) provide essential supporting contexts

along the way. This combination of dharma and sangha in American Jodo Shinshu may

not be unique in American cultural life, but it is sufficiently rare that it should be treated,

at least provisionally, as irreducible to any practice and organization, including


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psychotherapeutic regimes, that are devoid of deep hearing, reciting the nembutsu, and

social gathering.

III. Psychology and the Psychologist

In B. F. Skinners novel Walden Two(1948), which describes Skinners vision of

a behaviorist utopia, the protagonist, Frazier, is challenged by a critic for not living his

personal life according to the principles and virtues which he has successfully engineered

into the Walden Two community. Frazier dismisses the criticism with a series of

rhetorical questions:

How much can you ask of a man?...Isnt it enough that Ive made other men likable and

happy and productive? Why expect me to resemble them? Must I possess the virtues

which Ive proved to be best suited to a well-ordered society? Must I exhibit the interests

and skills and untrammeled spirit which Ive learned to engender in others? Must I wear

them all like a damned manikin? After all, emulation isnt the only principle in education

all the damned saints to the contrary. Must the doctor share the health of his patient?

Must the ichthyologist swim like a fish? Must the maker of firecrackers pop?3

Fraziers retort, which we may safely assume spoke for the books author as well

as the character,4 announced a viewpoint about the relationship between psychologists

and their professional accomplishments which had become orthodox within American

psychology by the mid-twentieth century. According to this view, the persons work and

her character or personality were appropriately separated. The psychologist was not

required to exemplify the correctness of his teaching by personally demonstrating its

benefits. Personal characteristics were not included in the criteria used to judge the

validity or utility of a psychologists published theories or techniques. The psychological


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scientist/scholar/practitioner should have an arms length relationship with her subject

matter. The proof of the scientific pudding is always consumed in the public. The

psychologist is not obliged to offer up his private life by serving as one of his own

research subjects. In sum, psychologists are not expected to be a role-model for her their

theories or prescriptions. Indeed, the scientific establishment respects the scientist who

can change his mind about earlier positions and discard them in favor of a new position,

if an objective assessment of data points in that direction. We would not expect the

scientists personality, character, or other beliefs to change along with a revised belief,

based on new evidence, about a theoretical position.

The separation of the psychologist from the object of psychological inquiry was

firmly in place by the time Skinner articulated it at mid-century. For example, in 1904

James McKeen Cattell wrote It is usually no more necessary for the subject in a

psychology experiment to be a psychologist than it is for the vivisected frog to be a

physiologist.5 This position gained great support in Psychology because the method of

introspection had failed to generate reliable results across experimental subjects. The

behavioristic programs of John Watson, Adolph Meyer, Edward Thorndike, Edward

Tolman, Clark Hull, and B.F. Skinner, and the achievements of many applied

psychologists in the fields of intelligence testing, personality assessment, employment

testing and performance training, all proceeded with no attention to or interest in how the

psychologists, as individuals, did or did not conform to the descriptions or implications of

their work.


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Beginning around 1960, behaviorist doctrine was assaulted from all sides.

Advances in cognitive, physiological, and evolutionary Psychology undercut

behaviorisms claims to be the paragon of scientific virtue. Clinical Psychology within

the academy and mental and spiritual6 health movements outside of it offered a broader

spectrum of theories and treatment regimes than had been previously available.

Humanistic Psychology and Transpersonal Psychology are prominent examples.7

More recently, prominent academic Psychologists have championed positions, under the

headings of Positive Psychology and Hedonic Psychology, that also emphasize

positive emotions, optimistic worldviews, and resilient behavior.8 So far as I know,

however, none of these recent developments encourages or requires psychologists to

develop, demonstrate, or avow the attitudes or behavior that are the basis of study. These

new Psychologies remain steadfastly in the tradition of the Psychology of the Other One.

Clinical psychologists are expected to base practice on empirically validated methods.

They need not be the clients of other clinical psychologists as part of their training.9

Psychiatry. American Psychiatry is tightly connected to the practice of medicine:

Psychiatrists are qualified as Doctors of Medicine before they specialize in Psychiatry.

Moreover, licenses to practice medicine of any sort are controlled by state licensing

boards. Thus, there is a tight connection between the qualifications of practitioners and

public bureaucracies.

All of medical practice including psychiatry has been profoundly influenced by

rapid, powerful advances in biomedical science. Psychopharmacology has provided

Psychiatrists with therapeutic tools that have profound positive effects in many patients;

the drug Prozac is a prominent example.10 Treatment protocols based on


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psychotherapeutic drugs and relatively brief behavioral treatment require psychiatrists to

diagnose and prescribe in conformity with the diagnosis, but they do not require them to

avow a personal belief or demonstrate traits for patients to emulate. The psychiatrists

relationship with the patient remains impersonal or objective. So long as the psychiatrist

does a good enough job of diagnosis and prescription, her other beliefs and practices are

irrelevant to her status as an authentic practitioner.

The exception of psychoanalysis. It is well-known that Freud was a traditionally

trained Austrian physician who developed psychoanalysis after working in neurology and

psychiatry11. From the outset, however, Freud and other psychoanalysts emphasized the

importance of the analysts own psychoanalysis, including both self-analysis and training

analysis guided by another analyst. American psychoanalysts accepted this requirement

and institutionalized it.12 American psychoanalysts also restricted membership in other

ways, most notably by insisting that psychoanalysts be medical doctors first. Many of the

earliest American psychoanalytic leaders were eminent neurologists or psychiatrists

before converting to psychoanalysis. But the insistence on prior medical training was

neither encouraged nor required by Freud and other European analysts.13 What matters

most, according to this viewpoint, are commitments to method to continued self-scrutiny

according to the analytic categories of the tradition to which the analyst belongs. More

recently in America, the requirement of medical training has been removed by numerous

psychoanalytic training institutes. But personal analysis remains firmly established as an

essential part of the psychoanalysts professional qualifications14

IV. The Religious Teacher


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In this section I make a claim that seems to be obviously true and settled but is

subtly problematic nevertheless. The claim has two parts. The first part is that religious

teachers specifically, and many religious persons in general, have or have had

experiences which have deep and compelling meaning for them. The experience, as

experience, is not directly communicable to others. Moreover, it is not automatically, or

even readily, recaptured by the individual in its original form and detail. However it

comes to be described or evoked in detail, the experience is sufficiently memorable and

potent to change the direction of persons going forward.

The meaning of the experience, as an individual finds it, depends at least in part

on the language the individual uses to remember, attempt to recapture, understand, and

communicate to others what the experience was and why is so important to the

individual. Individuals vary widely in their skills at verbal re-presentations of

experiences and their significances. There are of course records of the efforts of other

individuals who have made their descriptions public, and over time these have become

amended and elaborated to extraordinary degrees and put into larger historical contexts in

various ways. Most individuals adopt one or another from the set of available

alternatives. Indeed, many if not most people, through exposure and training in

childhood, acquire the verbal framework for describing meaningful experience before

having the experience itself. Not everyone who acquires a framework as a child realizes

a deep experience as an adult to for which the framework seems appropriate. Perhaps not

everyone who has had such an experience has sought to describe or categorize it.

So here I have tried to describe as succinctly and simply, as I can, religious

experience and subsequent efforts at religious expression.15 The second part of my claim


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is that religious expressions have the character of an avowal, in a sense of that word that I

will expand on more fully below. But in colloquial English, what I mean to convey is

that the person who expresses himself religiously really means it. When uttered by a

religious teacher, there is no hesitation, reserve, or distance between the teacher and the

religious teaching at the time the teaching is uttered.

This is not the occasion to list many examples, but I hope that the few I have

chosen makes the claim clearer. The third paragraph of Chapter II ofTannisho seems to

capture the totality of Shinran Shonins trust:

I really do not know whether the Nembutsu may be the cause for my birth in the

Pure Land, or the act that shall condemn me to hell. But I have nothing to regret, even if

I should have been deceived by my teacher, and, saying the nembutsu, fall into hell. The

reason is that if I were capable of realizing Buddhahood by other religious practices and

yet fell into hell for saying the nembutsu, I might have dire regrets for having been

deceived. But since I am absolutely incapable any religious practice, hell is my only

home.16

The totality of commitment that Shinran expresses goes beyond conclusions

drawn after lengthy study and careful analysis, though Shinran had engaged in decades of

these activities. Professor Bloom has said of the quoted passage that Shinran placed his

faith in the Vow of Amida as a result of his own experience, something that cannot be

proven or disproven by intellectual analysis. Faith has to be experienced. Nothing

external can coerce it.17 And Professor Taitetsu Unno says The Buddha dharma is not

an object to be studied, analyzed or utilized. It is to be comprehended with ones whole


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being, and when it is truly heard no separation exists between the hearer and what is said.

Saichi, the mykninputs it this way:

It is not I who heard it.

It is not I who heard it;

Namu-amida butsu strikes into my heart

Now I am hit and taken by you.18

The totality of experience and abject surrender of these expressions may be of

particular significance in Jodo Shu and Jodo Shinshu relative to other Buddhist schools; I

dont know.19 In western religious traditions, there are many records of total surrender to

religious experience, as famously reviewed early in the twentieth century by William

James.20 My task here is only to identify expressions arising from such transformative

experiences as avowals, in the sense that Professor Fingarette developed this word in his

analysis of self-deception.21

I will introduce the meaning of avowal by relating an anecdote describing a

refusal of avowal. I once heard an esteemed scholar lecture brilliantly on Jodo Shinshu.

He led the audience through aspects of Shinran Shonins teaching and historical setting

with clarity and apparent deep feeling. Several of us went to him afterward to thank him

and ask questions. His replies were well-informed and thoughtful. Then someone asked a

question that took me by surprise, and the answer surprised me even more. The question

was Professor, are you a Buddhist? The answer was When I am speaking to

Buddhists, I am a Buddhist.

When I heard this I felt a quick stab of disappointment that was soon replaced by

a retreat into wariness and reserve. Can an expert on the worlds religions be a Buddhist


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when talking to Buddhists, a Moslem when talking to Moslems, a Baptist when talking to

Baptists, and an atheist when talking to atheists? What does it mean when ones self-

described religious affiliation varies with the affiliation of ones audience?

The answer to this question, of course, is that it can mean a number of different

things depending on other facts and circumstances not provided in the anecdote. To

forestall misunderstanding , I hasten to add that an expert on religion is not morally

obliged to have any particular religious affiliation at all, or to be crystal clear in his own

mind about what his religious affiliation is, or to lay bare his certainties and uncertainties

when asked about them by a stranger at the conclusion of a lecture. So for example, if

this expert (who has now morphed into a hypothetical person rather than a real one) finds

religious experiences and expressions to be very interesting as topics of psychological

and anthropological investigation, and understands and expounds them all just as a

brilliant actor portrays his characters, there is nothing therefore immoral or otherwise

objectionable about his conduct or his character. Indeed, the expert deserves credit as a

splendid teacher of the worlds religions.

There remains, nevertheless, a large difference between this expert and a religious

genius such as Shinran, an uneducated sandal-maker such as Saichi, and millions of

religious people throughout the world. The difference, in a word, lies in avowal.

Fignarette explains avowal in these terms: To avow, then, is to define ones

personal identity for oneself.Any such establishing or reaffirmation of ones personal

identity may come to fruition in a climactic, public act; or it may be so slow and so

evenly paced in its development as to seem to be natural evolution, or inherent stability in

the face of stress, rather than a dramatic act. Nevertheless, avowal and disavowal are


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always, inherently, purposeful self-expression rather than mere happenings suffered by a

person. Avowal and disavowal are accomplished by a person; they are responses by him

rather than effects upon him.22

Although avowal may be accompanied by public acknowledgment, such

acknowledgment is not a criterion of avowal: My use [of the word],though it suggests

overt expression of what is avowed, does not equate the avowal with the expression of it.

Avowal is an inner actwe can never say of any piece of overt conduct that it is the act

of avowal.23 Avowal carries the sense of commitment to and explicit consciousness of

ones engagement in a particular aspect of ones life. To put it yet another way, if I avow

x, I am identifying myself as being x, or believing that x is the case. Although avowal is

not identical to sincerity, they are related.24

To avow myself as a Buddhist, then, in the sense of avowal developed by

Fingarette, means to identify myself as a Buddhist. It would be an odd, flaccid sense of

identification that depended on the affiliations of my conversation partners of the

moment. Much follows from avowal. Much follows from disavowal. Much follows

from hypocrisy. Fingarette has drawn a map of the psychological and moral territory in

which these actions and their consequences are situated.

To conclude this section, then, I argue that religious teachers, if not scholars and

lecturers about religion, avow the religion they teach, and are expected to avow that

religion by those who are in their tutelage. In this way religious teachers are, and are

expected to be, a part of their teaching in a way that is distinct from and more demanding

than the normative relationship expected to obtain between psychologists/psychiatrists


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and their disciplines with the exception of psychoanalysts and their psychoanalytic

doctrines.

V. Buddhist Psychotherapy

What is life like for those who theorize and practice at the intersection of

Buddhism and psychotherapy? The conclusion drawn in the preceding paragraph leads

us to expect that, among therapists, psychoanalysts will frame their presentations25 in

more immediate and personal terms than other sorts of therapists will. Individuals who

identify themselves as psychoanalysts and as Buddhists are more likely to have faced,

and resolved or not, problems arising from potentially competitive or conflicting criteria

of avowal arising from their dual identifications.

There is no predicting the outcomes of these struggles, but we can expect that the

written accounts of them will reflect the best efforts of intelligent and sensitive

individuals working close to the core of their personal and professional lives. In

particular, we should discern a variety of resolutions of what I will call the problems of

priority and appropriation in respect to avowal.

Priority and appropriation in respect to avowal. Avowal is tied directly to language,

that is, to a description of what is avowed: [I]t is generally admitted that regardless of

whether there is speech, writing, or other overt use of language at a particular moment,

the forms of human existence have their source so profoundly in language that a practical

understanding of languageeven though it be tacitis of the essence whenever we are

engaged as human beings.26 At the very least, authors must choose conceptual schemes

and appropriate vocabularies to communicate with their audiences. This requirement

requires confronting questions of priority and appropriation: If I can write from within


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the Buddhist conceptual scheme and vocabulary or a psychoanalytic conceptual scheme

and vocabulary, which will I choose as the container and which as the contained? Which

will be the explaining scheme and which the explained? Which shall I portray as

doctrine and which as method? Which is the appropriating scheme and which is the

appropriated? How much shall I appropriate, and when will I interpret what I

appropriated in the vocabulary of the appropriating scheme? Which scheme can serve

merely instrumentally in the service of the other?

These questions are very important and vexing for individuals faced with

potentially or apparently conflicting demands for avowal. Among those with joint

interests in Buddhism and psychotherapy, Buddhist psychoanalysts are the therapists in

this position.

Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. The beginning of published dialogue between

Buddhism and psychoanalysis is usually credited to the 1957 meeting in Cuernevaca,

Mexico, which resulted in a text authored by D.T. Suzuki, Erich Fromm, and Richard De

Martino (1960).27 One can find in this text evidence of the distinction that I have labored

on in the preceding sections. Thus, Fromm begins his article by pointing to the arms-

length objectivity claimed for psychoanalytic doctrine: Psychoanalysis is a scientific

method, nonreligious to its core. He contrasts this with Zen: an experience which in

the West would b called religious or mystical. He then poses the rhetorical question that

establishes the foundation for the remainder of his essay: Can the discussion of the

relationship between psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism result in anything but the

statement that there exists no relationship except that of radical and unbridgeable

difference?28


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Fromms answer to his question29 points directly to the issues raised in the present

paper. A central foundation of the bridge linking analysis and Zen, he said, was the

responsibility of the anyalyst to be fully engaged with the patientfully open and

responsivesoaked with him, as it were. The analyst acts as a guideor as a

midwifebut he can never do for the patient what only the patient can do for himself.

The skilled analyst thus transcends indeed the conventional role of the doctor; he

become a teacher, a model, perhaps a master, provided that he himself never considers

himself as analyzed until he has attained full self-awareness and freedom, until he has

overcome his own alienation and separateness.30

With this emphasis on the continuous striving of the analyst to remove obstacles

to his own full self-awareness, Fromm is able to compare the method and goal of

psychoanalysis with Zen method andsatori as he understood them from reading and

conversation with Suzuki. He concludes that the ultimate transformation of

unconsciousness into consciousness approaches the concept of enlightenment, but that

this goal is quite obviously much more radical than the general psychoanalytic aim.31

Moreover, the methods of Zen and psychoanalysis, Fromm asserted, are entirely different

but complementary. Psychoanalytic experience might assist the Zen practitioner to avoid

illusions regarding his progress on the Zen path. Finally, however, an ultimate

uncovering of the unconscious could lead to enlightenment provided it is taken within

the philosophical context which is most radically and realistically expressed in Zen.32

In one sense, Fromms task was particularly difficult because he was breaking

new ground. But in another sense his task was relatively easy, because his connection to

Buddhism was still objective: he was an avowed psychoanalyst but not an avowed


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Buddhist. Yet he was prepared to commit to the proposition that, without operating

within a particular Buddhist philosophical context, an ultimate uncovering producing

enlightenment was impossible. He resolved questions of priority and appropriation by

refusing to assimilate one scheme into the other. He gave pride of ultimate place to Zen,

as he understood it from the outside looking in.

Recent authors. There is now a wealth of writing about Buddhism and

psychoanalysis. Many of these authors identify themselves both as psychoanalysts and as

Buddhists trained in one or more Mahayana traditions.33 I must limit consideration here to

just a two examples of how authors confront questions of priority and appropriation in the

context of avowal. The examples are taken from the excellent collection of essays by

nineteen authors and edited by Jeremy Safran.34 I will begin with Safrans own

contribution to the volume.

Jeremy Safran.35 Safrans introduction to the collection includes masterful

reviews of Buddhist and psychoanalytic fundamentals. In addition to these skilled

expositions, Safran moves quickly to establish strong positions of his own, beginning

with following claim: It has become clear that psychoanalysis is not a science in the

same sense that physics or chemistry are, but rather a secular form of spirituality.36

Taken at face value, this is an odd claim, because it appears to suggest that there are only

two possibilities for psychoanalysis: as physical science or as secular spiritual

enterprise. One expects some justification for moving so quickly from one extreme to the

other might have been expected. The full significance of the claim remains unclear until

the rest of Safrans resolution of priority and appropriation questions is understood at the

conclusion of his article.


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Put succinctly but I hope fairly, Safrans resolution of priority and appropriation

rests on wholesale deconstruction of linguistic meaning. He begins with the observation

that early Buddhist thinking rejected all metaphysical speculation.committing

oneself to a metaphysical view or a theological doctrine is a form of enslavement. It

interferes with the openness essential to enlightenment or true existential awakening.37

With expository skill and grace, Saffran moves across the history of Buddhist doctrinal

development to its current position, which he sees as consistent with the main tenets of a

Western post-modernist world view, embracing interpersonal interdependence, a

constructivist rather than realist epistemology, and a de-unification of the self.38 He says

in Buddhist constructivism, the primary thrust is to cultivate a radical sense of

openness.The emphasis is not on constructing adaptive narratives but rather on the

radical deconstruction of all narratives.39 He finds recent developments in

psychoanalysis also to be in accord with post-modern positions, but there remains much

in psychoanalysis that resists such changes in world view. Buddhism and psychoanalysis

confront each other as two divergent pathways to liberation, with Buddhism

challenging the tendency in analysis to accentuate individual independence, and analysis

challenging the tendency that Buddhism shares with all religions to crystallize into

religious orthodoxy. These mutually corrective tendencies have the potential for

enriching both traditions.40

Safrans seems to deny the need to avow tenets of either psychoanalysis or

Buddhism in specific terms. To do so would require the construction of an adaptive

narrative rather than deconstruction of all narratives. One lives without conceptual

commitment, perpetually open to experience as it arises and changes. If avowal depends


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on language, and language is up for grabs and dangerous, then avowal should be avoided

by Buddhist psychoanalysts and their analysands.

If I have correctly understood and fairly characterized Safrans resolution of the

questions of priority and appropriation in respect to avowal, then it reminds me initially

of a statement about the value of a bayonet: you can do a lot with it, but you cant sit on

it. The life and mind described in his conclusion seem to be the life and mind of a

Buddha, whose upaya is contextualized communication of boundless wisdom and

compassion totally without attachment. If that is what Safran is pointing to, then perhaps

his avowal consists in the aspiration to become free in the sense that a Buddha is free.

This is a grand aspiration, but serious questions remain about how to behave in the

meantime.

Though short of Buddhahood, advanced teachers in all lineages are frequently

credited with cutting through the confusions of their students with surprising instructions

or silences. But in all of these instances, the teacher self-identifies and is recognized, for

example as a member of a particular Zen or Tibetan lineage, or a kaikyoshi minister in the

Buddhist Churches of America, or an analyst trained at the Menninger Institute These

identifications count for something. When explicit progress is at a standstill, when the

teacher has had a bad day, both teacher and student, analyst and analysand, can rely on

the commitments that have been made: the avowals of belief and acceptance that support

continuation in the temporary absence of energy or desire to continue.

Finally, there is an obvious way in which avowal, priority, and appropriation

cannot be dissolved in the deconstructive blender. The full context in which the Buddhist

psychoanalyst chooses to practice is an indicator of avowal. If a Buddhist psychoanalyst


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practices as an avowed Buddhist first and psychoanalyst second, thereby giving

Buddhism priority and appropriating analysis for its instrumental value, then the teachers

financial and legal relationships with the student are going to be rather different from the

case of the Buddhist psychoanalyst who avows analysis first and Buddhism second. No

Buddhist teacher I know of charges many dollars per hour of contact and carries

malpractice insurance, nor does any analyst I know of depend for his income only on

voluntary contributions from his analysands and conduct regular ritual services as a

condition of employment.. To phrase a question in very colloquial English, whats that

about? The answer is that it is about the un-deconstructed reality of avowal in full

context.

Mark Finn. Finn, a psychologist in New York City who is an expert in

psychoanalytic object relations theory, describes himself as a thirty-year student in the

Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Finns expressions of avowal, priority, and

appropriation contrast with those of Safran. The founding premise of his article, titled

Tibetan Buddhism and a Mystical Psychoanalysis, is that separation of the

psychological from the spiritual aspects of our lives is a false construct.41 Even so, he

recognizes that it is difficult for him as a practicing psychoanalyst to express full

religious sentiment or spiritual depth. In responding to a critique of his primary essay in

the text, he says In my attempts to be a psychoanalytic apologist for Buddhism I believe

I have been guilty of a religious coyness. He reflects that accepting the spiritual

overtones of Buddhist practice without attending to the whole upsetting matter of

religion is an path for psychoanalysts who would be uncomfortable with frank religious

avowal. He acknowledges personal concern on this point as well: Now there is probably


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wisdom as well as coyness in skirting the spiritual. We are walking so close to the

vastness of theology that a little caution is not out of place.42 At the close of his

presentation, however, he makes a frank avowal: As I have grown older, less fearful of

madness, less desperate for clear positions, I am more open to a felt sense of the

supernatural.I find it hard but helpful to try to be open to being surprised by the world.

That effort takes me further into religion than some friends and patients but not nearly as

far as others.43 In the context of that commitment, Finn recommends studying the

histories of Tibetan saints, who give living focus for devotion. They exemplify spiritual

triumph in ways understandable to those who still struggle.44 Rather than disavowing

any religious conceptual scheme, which Safran prescribes as core to Buddhist progress,

Finn turns to history and biography squarely within the teachings of a particular lineage.

There is more than method at stake in this distinction; there is avowal of religious priority

combined with an awareness of the utility of these teachings as psychotherapeutic.

The examples of Safran and Finn do not exhaust the range and depth of Buddhist

psychoanalysts efforts to place themselves authentically in the moral space created by

their avowals. They must suffice here, nevertheless, to show how aware and earnest

Buddhist psychoanalysts are about finding that place and operating within it in their

professional lives. Their efforts contrast predictably with the work of psychotherapists

in other traditions, whose relationship with Buddhism lies in a respectful, instrumental

appropriation of meditation for the benefits it can deliver to the well-being of their

patients/clients.45 The therapists may or may not be Buddhists, but they are careful to

disassociate their religious avowal from their advocacy of meditation in psychotherapy.


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But the separation between their personal commitments and their advocacy of

therapeutic meditation is emphasized.

Mindfulness in Psychotherapy. Mindfulness meditation is now advocated as a valuable

method in psychotherapy apart from psychoanalysis. Proponents of teaching mindfulness

in a variety of healing contexts (including, for example, relief from back pain) appear to

maintain a greater distance between their advocacy and their personal religious positions.

Consider, for example, the distancing contained in this prefatory paragraph to a

very recent collection of articles about mindfulness and psychotherapy:

Mindfulness is the heart of Buddhist psychology. Most of the authors of this volume

consider themselves students of Buddhist psychology and meditation rather than

Buddhists. None of us were raised in countries with a Buddhist culture. Similarly, when

mindfulness skills are taught in therapy, patients do not need to take up a new religion or

exotic lifestyle to benefit from them. As mindfulness theory and practice are increasingly

adopted by Western psychology, concern about this issue will probably diminish.46 One

of the authors of this position identifies himself as having received lay ordination as a

Zen Buddhist, and the others have had many years of experience in yoga and meditation.

Each of the other eight authors of articles in the volume identify themselves as

individuals with considerable experience in Buddhist traditions of one sort or another.

But the separations between their personal commitments and therapeutic advocacy of

meditation are emphasized.

This emphasis seems aimed at not scaring off therapists or potential patients

who would offer or accept training mindfulness meditation training so long as it not

clothed in any religious garb. Although Buddhist Psychology is affirmed, questions or


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affirmations about relationships between Buddhist Psychology and Buddhist belief, faith,

or devotion are left in the background. Secular scientific psychotherapy is the

appropriating schema, and mindfulness meditation is the appropriated method.

The assumed irrelevance of the therapists own Buddhist commitments, and the

extraction of mindfulness meditation from any religious context, are displayed in another

recent collection of articles that advocate mindfulness practice as an expansion of

cognitive-behavioral therapies.47 Unlike the psychoanalysts or self-identifying students

of Buddhism described in the previous paragraphs, the contributors to Mindfulness and

Acceptanceprovide essentially no information regarding any personal religious

commitments, nor does the relationship between mindfulness meditation and its religious

roots otherwise appear prominently in the text. Neither Buddhism nor religion

appears in the books index. The intention to distance the therapeutic use of meditation

from any religion connection is made admirably explicit in a chapter by Alan Marlatt and

his colleagues, describing their controlled studies that used vipassana meditation as part

of a treatment scheme to reduce post-release alcohol and drug consumption of prisoners.48

The meditation practice employed is based on the teaching of S.N. Goenka, whose

teaching is described as follows: Goenka has presented Vipassana in the form of 10-day

meditation course, offered in over 100 meditation centers in 56 countries. It is taught and

explained by Goenka in thoroughly modern and secular terminology that makes it

accessible to practitioners of any religion or no religion.49

Sympathy with Buddhist

psychology nevertheless appears quietly in the article, where the authors state that

Buddhist psychology is congruent with the tenets of radical behaviorism and

consistent with the practices of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. This framing of the


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matter leaves little doubt about the relationship between appropriating and appropriated

schemata that is endorsed by the authors, perhaps in an effort to forestall reluctance by

other clinical practitioners to engage in any practice with a whiff of exotic fragrance.

The risk of assimilative integration. The risk inherent in thoroughly divorcing

meditative methods completely from their larger philosophical-religious contexts and

requirement of personal engagement, has been noted in an article published in 2006 by

Roger Walsh and Shauna Shapiro in the flagship journal of the American Psychological

Association.50 They criticize the trend toward assimilative integration of meditation,

which they describe as a major recontextualization and revisioning of the practices

within an exclusively Western psychological and philosophical framework.51 They argue

that treating meditation as just another therapeutic techniqueoverlooks much of the

richness and uniqueness of the meditative disciplines and the valuable complementary

perspectives they offer.52 Walsh and Vaughn urge therapists to experience meditation

directly, to reduce their own stress levels, improve the quality of attention with which

they listen to their patients, and thus increase their therapeutic effectiveness.

Secular Meditation The Religion of No Religion, and Buddhism Without Beliefs.

The preceding sections have documented that psychotherapists of different schools or

traditions take different positions respecting the connection between their use of

meditation in therapy and their own avowed commitments to one or more forms of

meditation and their religious roots. The assimilative integration of meditation into a

Western, objectivist, scientific world view has been identified, embraced by some

therapists, and gently criticized by others. Those who embrace this recontextualization

and revisioning into a Western secular scheme might claim to find support from some of


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the publications of well-known, even world-revered, Buddhist teachers. Explicit

advocacy on behalf of secular meditation has been part of the public teaching of His

Holiness the Dalai Lama.53 Lectures by the very influential Buddhist teacher Alan Watts

emphasized, and have been published as, Buddhism as the Religion of No Religion.54

And the gifted, widely respected Buddhist teacher Stephen Batchelor wrote Buddhism

Without Beliefs with an intention to replace dogmatic belief in the Four Noble Truths,

and ancient doctrines of karma and reincarnation, with an acceptance of the four

ennobling truths [as] challenges to act.55 How do these teachings support, or not, the

assimilative integration of meditation into Psychology?

In his 1995 lecture on secular meditation, the Dalai Lama encouraged a

combination of analytic meditation (thinking matters through, problem solving, etc.)

and single-pointedness as a meditative practice that requires no prior religious

commitment, such as an avowal of faith. Properly employed, this form of meditation can

increase mental happiness through the development of basic human good qualities,

existing in everyone but in need of growth. Because increasing mental happiness

(distinct from physical happiness, which he referred to approximately as comforts

achievable with money) is the goal of human life, such meditation is a wholesome

practice which has the Dalai Lamas full endorsement, especially when it focuses on a

good human quality such as compassion.

Is this position as announced by the Dalai Lama equivalent to approving the

assimilative integration of meditation methodology into Western Psychology? I think

not, for the following reasons:


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Western Psychology does not (yet?), in its terms, postulate the existence and

growth potential of innate good human qualities that are the predicate for the

Dalai Lamas advocacy of secular meditation. These qualities are distinctly

moral in character and arise elsewhere in Western intellectual and religious

traditions.

Western Psychology does not (yet?) separate physical happiness from mental

happiness strictly as the Dalai Lama does in his teaching..

The Dalai Lama speaks out of a context of personal avowals (I am a Buddhist

monk) and personal history that give him virtually unique source credibility on

the topics he is addressing. His support for secular meditation arises from his

insights into the world based on his lifetime of religious service and devotion.

To use a well-known Buddhist metaphor, having crossed the river himself, he no

longer needs the boat. He speaks to us from that position.

Alan Watts (1915-1973) and Stephen Batchelor have portrayed Buddhism as a

source of insight and happiness to which the label religion need not apply. Both

authors write scornfully about religion, which for them is shorthand for

organized religion, meaning an institutional church and its associated set of non-

negotiable demands for faith. Thus Watts writes All religious comments about life

eventually become clichs. Religion is always falling apart and promoting lip

service and imitation. The imitation of Christ, for example, is a perfect example. It

is a terrible idea because everyone who imitates Christ becomes a kind of fake Jesus.

In the same way, there are all kinds of imitation Buddhas in Buddhism, not only

sitting on wooden altars but sitting around in the monasteries too. One might say


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that the highest kind of religious or spiritual attainment shows not sign that it is

religious or spiritual.All specifically religious activity is legs on a snake.56

In writing about the history of Buddhism, Stephen Batchelor laments the effects

of the Buddhas teachings having turned into Buddhism: Religious interpretations

invariably reduce complexity to uniformity while elevating matter-of-factness to

holiness.[The] transformation of Buddhism into a religion obscures and distorts

the encounter of the dharma with contemporary agnostic culture. The dharma might

well have more in common with Godless secularism than with the bastions of

religion. Agnosticism may serve as a more fertile common ground for dialogue

than, for example, a tortured attempt to make Buddhist sense of Allah. 57

Left with just these statements, one might conclude that Watts and Batchelor were

indifferent to, or even supportive of, the assimilative integration of Buddhist

meditation methods into Western Psychology. But as in the case of the Dalai Lama,

this conclusion would be incorrect. In Batchelors case, he says so quite explicitly

on two occasions: While Buddhism has tended to become reductively identified

with its religious forms, today it is further danger of being reductively identified

with its forms of meditation. If these trends continue, it is liable to become

increasingly marginalized and lose its potential to be realized as a culture: an

internally consistent set of values and practices that creatively animates all aspects

of human life. And later he adds Dharma practice today faces two primary

dangers: through resisting creative interaction, it could end up as a marginalized

subculture, a beautifully preserved relic, while through losing its inner integrity and

critical edge, it could end up being swallowed by something else,such as


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psychotherapy or contemplative Christianity.58 Watts, whose text is the transcript

of lectures he delivered during the 1960s, did not address the question of

psychotherapy directly there. But he gave us a completely clear idea of the intended

meaning of his paradoxical phrase, the religion of no-religion. When he was

introduced to Asian art as a child, he writes, I had an absolute fascination for

Chinese and Japanese secular paintingthe landscapes, the treatment of flowers and

grasses and bamboos.Even as a child I had to find out what the strange element in

those bamboos and grasses was. I was, of course, being taught by those painters to

see grass, but there was something else in their paintings that I could never put my

finger on. That something else was this thing that I will call the religion of no-

religion. It is the supreme attainment of a buddha: it cannot be detected; it leaves no

trace.59 Thus Watts describes his journey thorough years of searching, including

practice as an Episcopal priest before turning to Buddhism. His religion of no-

religion offers no support for assimilative integration or an arms length analysis of

meditation. Watts avows an unfulfilled aspiration to see the world as a buddha sees

the world, which is the world just as it is. Whether labeled as religious or non-

religious, this aspiration is not irreligious.

VI. Buddhist Psychotherapy and Christian Psychotherapy: A Study in

Contrasts.

[Not included here]

VII. Conclusion: The Case for Jodo Shinshu

Alan Watts once called Jodo Shinshu a very strange religion, and he had a

point.60 The gradual awakening to ones ordinariness; the development of personal


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knowledge arising from paying close attention to ones endless displays of personal

ignorance; the felt availability of a comforting resource experienced through acceptance

of ones total lack of spiritual resources; the growth of gratitude without a bounded

object of gratitude: all of these descriptions soundstrange to the point of paradox, but, I

believe, they are experienced in the Shin Buddhist context as exemplifying the universal

human condition just as it is. The experiences are not strange. They are stabilizing,

strengthening, and revelatory.

I make no claim that my Shin Buddhist experiences, and my descriptions of them,

are privileged or canonical relative to those of any other avowed Shin Buddhist. I am

quite sure that many others enjoy and convey the Nembutsu teaching far better than I do.

In terms of the well-known Buddhist metaphor, I do not claim that my finger is closer to

the moon, or more accurately aimed at it, than someone elses finger is. I claim only that

the experience I am describing, and the language I use, are themselves appropriately

labeled in English as religious. Unless we are all going to go silent on each other with

respect to this important part of our lives, we must communicate with language. The

words and phrases we use to describe our experience, our linguistic fingers as it were,

dwell in semantic spaces where they are connected to other symbols in extraordinarily

complicated networks. To fulfill their functions, elements in such networks depend on

other elements being in their expected places. Elements and small groups of elements

cannot be moved across disparate networks with confidence of successful integration into

the new network environment. We shouldnt plug a 12-vote appliance into a 110-volt

power supply or put gasoline into a diesel engine. We shouldnt flee from religious

experience in search of a non-religious description of it.


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With that said, the fact remains that descriptions of religious experience and

explanations of religious experience are language-based activities that are at once

different yet connected in a fundamental way. Here I follow the argument of Wayne

Proudfoot in his textReligious Experience.61 Proudfoot argues that the fundamental

feature of religious experience is not its content as immediately apprehended or

subsequently described by an individual, but rather the explanatory framework to which

it is attributed by the experiencing subject.62 Various kinds of explanations might be

employed to account for an experience; only some of these are religious explanations.

What makes them religious is a matter of debate and dispute among philosophers of

religion.

Proudfoot argues further that the terms used in descriptions of religious

experience are privileged. That is to say, others may not legitimately re-describe or

paraphrase my experience, as being my experience, without my assent. But no such

restriction applies to explanation. Except for social conventions of comity and respect,

my explanations of my experience as a Shin Buddhist are fair game for analysts or critics

who choose to explain my experience and descriptions in terms of their own explanatory

frameworks, be they from another religious tradition, psychoanalysis or other

psychological theory, or even brain physiology or psychopharmacology.

I think that Proudfoots distinction between descriptive reduction and explanatory

reduction is useful in both individual and collective contexts. I conclude that I own my

descriptions of my religious experience but have no such right over others explanations

of them. Generalizing from my personal case to American Shin Buddhists collectively,

for example as organized in the Buddhist Churches of America, I conclude that our


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rejection of a re-description of Shin practice and experience (e.g.Shin Buddhists believe

that Amida Buddha protects them from harm if they recite the Nembutsu) could be

authoritative and definitive, but our rejection of a re-explanation of the

teachings(Reliance on Other Power in Jodo Shinshu is a regression to infantilism, a

search for the all-comforting embrace of the Mother) would be legitimately subject to

the usual sort of learned debate and criticism that occurs about such topics.

I do not accept, however, that the distinction between description and explanation

is a clear-cut as Proudfoot implies. The sort of explanatory reduction of religious

experience that Proudfoot defends can become the sort of descriptive reduction of

religious experience that Proudfoot rejects. Thus, if I come to explain my experience in

terms of a vocabulary that is different from the vocabulary I use initially to describe the

experience, there will be a strong and reasonable tendency finally to describe the

experience as merely, no more than, or really some event described in terms of the

alternate vocabulary. To see how description and explanation are enmeshed in a skilled

critique of religion, see Daniel Dennetts bookBreaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural

Phenomenon. 63

More importantly, I do not believe that, for Jodo Shinshu, the explanations of

religious experience differ profoundly from descriptions of them. Attending to the

mundane events of daily life, I can observe my own foolishness. I experience shame. I do

not feel good about myself. At the same time I affirm my foolishness and shame, I note

that I am not threatened by them. They are a fact of my being, not a challenge to it or

stain on it. This is a great relief, and not an awareness that I enjoyed before I started on

the Shin Buddhist path. How to explain that? It is enough to say thatI truly understand


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that I am foolish and still supported by causes and conditions that surround me. I avow

myself as a person in such a position in life. This is enough. To accept that I am

supported in the midst of my foolishness is to explain how I feel about it. There is a

wealth of Shin Buddhist literature to which I can turn for elaborations, evocations,

exhortations, celebrations, and descriptions by others. These become another cause for

gratitude, because they help me over rough spots, when I lose the focus of my

understanding.

This is, I suppose, pretty humble stuff compared to religious experience in other

traditions. So be it. But the question arises, as a matter of religious policy as it were,

whether alternate explanations are likely to be superior. In particular, the question arises

whether this humble stuff is going to be useful in the world of psychotherapeutic practice.

Certainly the practice of Naikan64 seems congruent to it, as it was intended to be. I am

eager to learn from others, such as the experts attending this Eugene Conference, how

they incorporate, coordinate, or separate their therapeutic and Shin religious practices.

My conclusion at this point is that, so long as the therapist avows the practice of deep

hearing and recitation of Nembutsu, that is, identifies herself as a Shin Buddhist, her

compassion will spill into whatever form of therapy she practices and her wisdom will

prevent her from confusing her patients by teaching them that accepting themselves

requires that they always feel good about themselves. When this therapist speaks, her

patient will hear her pop.


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1 I was trained as an experimental psychologist during the 1950s and 1960s and conducted research on the biology of

behavior for the first decade of my career (e.g. Bermant & Davidson 1976). I was then drawn by events to study the

intersection of psychology and the law, which has occupied me in various ways ever since (e.g. Bermant, 2005).2 I distinguish between two meanings of psychology as follows: Psychology [capital P] refers to the theories, practices,

and publications of psychologists. But psychology [small p] is the generic term referring to mental life and its relation to

behavior, attitudes, motives, etc. Using the word in these two forms allows us to distinguish what is to be discovered about

human beings (our psychology) from what the current state and organization of our knowledge (Psychology). So we can

say that Psychology is the state of our understanding of psychology; Psychology is fallible, but psychology isnt. I will not

follow the same convention for psychiatry or psychoanalysis.3 Skinner, B.F., Walden Two, at 249-250..4 For literary evidence to support this claim, note that the protagonist and major antagonist in the novel are named Frazierand Burris, respectively. Skinners first and middle names were Burrhus and Frederick, though he used only his initials as

an author. Both in autobiography and biography, Skinners avowed support for the value of large-scale behavioral

engineering based on operant conditioning principles was explicit. (During the late 1950s, as a Psychology graduate

student at Harvard, I attended some meetings of a student group calling itself the Walden Two Society, which was

concerned to promote Skinnerian principles in the design and operation of institutions. This is a story for another occasion.)5 Lyons, Joseph, The Disappearance of Introspection, at 23, citing to the original and other publications supporting the point

made here.6 The word spiritual is used often without careful specification, to describe whats left over when other categories ofmental life seem inadequate to the descriptive task. A timely example of this is how people describe themselves in their on-

line dating service resums. Under the category of Religion, a popular category is Spiritual but not Religious.

7 See for example Moss, Donald, Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology.8 See for example Seligman, Martin, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential

for Lasting Fulfillment; and Kahneman, Daniel et al., Well-Being: the Foundations of Hedonic Psychology.9 See generally the website of the Division of Clinical Psychology (Division 12), American Psychological Association. The

American Psychological is not a monolith, however. See the website of Division 39, the Division of Psychoanalysis. This

division includes a section called Psychologist-Psychoanalyst Practitioners. Membership in the section requires a minimum

of 300 hours of personal analysis undertaken at a rate of at least three sessions per week.10 Kramer, Peter D., Listening to Prozac, at 300: Here, I think, is Prozacs most profound moral consequence, in changingthe sort of evidence we attend to, in changing our sense of constraints on human behavior, in changing the observing self.

The book stimulated much discussion pro and con its thesis about Prozacs character-altering consequences.11 Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. 1, at 36-220.12 Hale, Freud and the Americans, at 322-323: In 1910 Freud warned the Nuremburg Congress that no analyst could go

further than his own complexes and resistances. The psychoanalyst must begin by analyzing himself and continually

deepen his self-knowledge while he worked with his patients.A second method of training was originated by the Zurichschool around 1907 when Burghlzli physicians began half seriously to analyze each others dreams. Freud praised their

growing insistence that a psychoanalyst first be analyzed by another analyst before treating patients. He should undergo,Freud wrote, a purification of his own complexes. In 1923 the New York Psychoanalytic Society, following precedent

set by the Berlin and Vienna societies, required all candidates for active membership to have undergone a satisfactory

analysis at the hands of a competent analyst. The personal analysis of the analyst later was separated from the training

analysis, which aimed specifically at controlled learning of treatment techniques.13 Hale, Freud and the Americans, at 326-327: Psychoanalysis demanded not so much a medical education, Freud argued

in 1913, as psychological instruction and a free human outlook; indeed, the majority of physicians were unfitted for

it.He once went so far as to suggest that an American might finance the psychoanalytic training of social workers, who

would form a Salvation Army to fight the neuroses of civilization. Yet no matter the previous education of the trainee,analytic training required self-analysis and training analysis, because otherwise theoretical instructionreading and

lecturesfailed to penetrate deeply enough. There are obvious similarities between these attitudes and frequentlyexpressed opinions about requirements for making progress on Buddhist paths.14 Coopersmith, Sy, The Significance of National Accreditation. NAAP [ National Association for the Advancement of

Psychoanalysis] News. The author comments on the contentious history of opening the door of American psychoanalytic

practice to non-physicians, and emphasizes the importance of personal analysis as a sine qua non of training: a total of 450

hours is specified. (Compare the requirements of Division 29, American Psychological Association, cited above at note XX)

But the frequency of sessions per week required for an effective protocol is a matter of dispute among psychoanalysts.

Some contend that three sessions per week is the minimum, while others argue that fewer than three sessions can still be

effective.

15 There is a large literature about this topic produced by authors of various disciplinary backgrounds, and I am ignorant of

almost all of it.


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16 Unno,Taitetsu, Tannisho: A Shin Buddhist Classic, at 6.17 Bloom, Alfred, Tannisho: Resource for Modern Living, at 26.18 Unno, Tannisho: A Shin Buddhist Classic, at 42.19 Professor Bloom suggests that this was the case during Honens and Shinrans liftetimes. Bloom, Alfred, Tannisho:

Resource for Modern Living, at 23-24.20 James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience. See also Taylor, Charles, Varieties of Religion Today: William

James Revisited.21 Fingarette, Herbert, Self-Deception.22 Fingarette, at 69.23 Fingarette, at 70.24 Fingarette,, at 50-51. Fingarette provides an elegant analysis of surface sincerity, as distinct from avowal: [surfacesincerity] is the mistake of taking the intensity of ones feeling as a guide to expressing the durability of ones

commitment.25 Presentation is the best word I have found to carry two distinct meanings in this setting. The first is the presentation of

the subject matter under discussion, for example, the relationship between religious sentiment and regressive tendencies.

The second is the presentation of the self of the author in relation to the topic, for example, how the author incorporates his

or her own religious sentiment into a psychoanalytic context.26 Fingarette, at 45.27 Carl Jungs introduction to Suzukis Zen Buddhism is also frequently cited. This was not, however, an engagement in

print as the publication arising from the Cuernevaca workshop. And Fromm expressed sharp disagreement with Jung on

the nature of religious experience in relation to Zen. See Fromm at 116.

28 Fromm, Erich, Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism. In Suzuki, Fromm, & Martino, at 7729 Fromms essay includes several themes that deserve attention in the Buddhist context, including for example his

description of consciousness as primarily passive and receptive rather than active and constructive. Much of Fingarettes

argument in Self-Deception goes toward replacing consciousness-as-sensation with consciousness-as-activity.30 Fromm, at 112-11331 Fromm, at 139,137.32 Fromm, 140-141.33 As a matter of professional demographics, it is interesting to note the prevalence of Ph.D. analysts rather than M.D.analysts in the mix of Buddhist psychoanalysts. In the Safran book discussed below, only two of the nineteen authors were

medically trained. With respect to Buddhist connections, Zen, Tibetan, Insight, Mindfulness and Vipassana are the self-

expressed labels of affiliation.34 Safran, Jeremy D., Ed. (2003) Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. .35 Safran, Jeremy D. (2003) Psychoanalysis and Buddhism as Cultural Institutions.36

Safran, Cultural Institutions, at 237 Safran, at 13-14.38 Safran, at 8-9.39 Safran, at 22.40 Safran, at 31.41 Finn, Mark, Tibetan Buddhism and a Mystical Psychoanalysis, in Safran, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism.42 Finn, at 124.43 Finn, at 129.44 Finn, at 106.45 In the United Statres, the distinction between patient and client historically marked a border between the semantic

frames of medical psychotherapy and psychotherapy in other secular contexts. It is, on the one hand, a mere labelingdistinction that might be ignored. On the other hand, the social and economic realities operating within these frames are

non-overlapping and may affect how the members of therapeutic dyads regard each other. To take but one example, healthinsurance benefits, and hence affordability, of therapy can hinge on whether one is a patient of a psychiatrist or a client of a

psychiatric social worker.46 Germer, Christopher K., Siegel, Ronald D. & Fulton, Paul R. Atxv.47 Hayes, Steven C., Follette, Victoria M. & Linehan, Marsha M. Mindfulness and Acceptance: Expanding the Cognitive-

Behavioral Tradition.48 Marlatt, G. Alan , et al. Vipassana Meditation as a Treatment for Alcohol and Drug Use Disorders.49 Marlatt, et al., at 267.50 Walsh, Roger & Shapiro, Shauna L., The Meeting of Meditative Disciplines and Western Psychology: A MutuallyEnriching Dialogue.51 Walsh & Shapiro, at 22852 Id..


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53 His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Secular Meditation54 Watts, Alan, Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion..55 Batchelor, Stephen ,Buddhist Without Beliefs, at 7.56 Watts, at 34-35, 48.57 Batchelor, at 4, 17.58 Batchelor, at 20, 114 (emphasis added).59 Watts, at 37.60 Watts, at 95.61 Proudfoot, Wayne, Religious Experience62 Proudfoot, at 231.63 Ironically, Dennetts definition of religion seems to exclude Buddhism: Today I propose to define religions associal

systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought[A] religion

without Godorgods is like a vertebrate without a backbone. Dennett, at 964 Krech, Gregg,

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